An electric vehicle (EV) battery uses up just 30kg of raw materials with recycling compared to the 17,000 litres of petrol burned by the average car. That’s according to a new study that shows Europe’s current crude oil dependency far outweighs its need for battery raw materials. The gap is set to increase further as technological advancements drive down the amount of lithium required to make an EV battery by half over the next decade. The amount of cobalt required will drop by more than three-quarters and nickel by around a fifth.
Lucien Mathieu, transport and e-mobility analyst at T&E, said: “When it comes to raw materials there is simply no comparison. Over its lifetime, an average fossil-fuel car burns the equivalent of a stack of oil barrels, 25 storeys high. If you take into account the recycling of battery materials, only around 30kg of metals would be lost – roughly the size of a football.
In 2035 over a fifth of the lithium and 65% of the cobalt needed to make a new battery could come from recycling, the study finds. T&E said the recycling rates, which are required under a new law proposed by the European Commission, will significantly reduce EVs’ demand for new materials – something that cannot be said for conventional cars.
They compare the materials to run a petrol car with the materials to recycle an EV battery. They measure the materials by weight or volume. This is not a useful comparison.
It would be more useful if it also included the materials to run the EV, and the materials to recycle the petrol engine. And maybe the original manufacture of both. Then there is the difference in what the materials are. I do not find kg or litres a persuasive metric, as it fails to reflect the different difficulties and impacts of extracting the different materials.
@Ivan Good observations. I suspect the main point of this article was to start a discussion around the relative embodied and operational energy costs for each mode, and to quickly derive a startling graph of the difference between them.
Also the higher purchase price of new EV’s will require larger car loans, but perhaps with quicker payback periods to be made by the operational costs saved.
I have to agree with IVAN here. These metrics tell us nothing about the relative scarcity of those materials, or the various impacts they have either to obtain them, during use or at end of life.
N.B. I make no comment as to what the conclusions would be when these things are considered since I am not qualified to do so.
They also don’t appear to consider that there are several interesting battery techonologies that may become viable soon which may not require all of the same materials.